#lower paleolithic

[inspofromancientworld]

Stone Tools: Acheulean

By José-Manuel Benito Álvarez (España) —> Locutus Borg - Own work, CC BY-SA 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1605723

Named for Saint-Acheul in northern France, the Acheulean, or Mode II is characterized by pear-shaped and oval tools and lasted from about 1,950,000 through about 125,000 years ago, with pockets that continued until about 50,000 years ago. These dates are based on dating volcanic ash or by testing the magnetostratigraphy, that is checking the alignment of magnetic minerals deposited to find out where the north pole was at the time they were laid down, or dating of organic material in the same layers as the tools were found. Based on these techniques, it appears that Acheulean tools originated in Africa and spread through Eurasia by 800,000 years ago.

One of the major improvements of the Acheulean tools over the Oldowan is the use of a 'soft hammer' that could be made of wood, bone, or antler, allowing more control over how the tool is finished and allowing for dulled tools to be resharpened. The tools were worked on both sides, allowing large flakes to be processed into tools as well as the cores that the Oldowan used.

By I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following license:, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=11656505

To make these tools, large flakes would be removed by a hammerstone, as with the Oldowan tools, but this would be taken a step further to work both faces of the core, with smaller flakes being removed, working to the soft hammer to remove thinner and smaller flakes to reach the desired shape. This would require the toolmaker to consider several steps ahead and to appropriately judge the flaws of the material they were using to successfully knap a tool.

Researchers have found collections of hundreds of tools, many too large to be used easily, and many unused, as far as we can tell. Knowing exactly why this happened is not possible, but researchers have a few theories as to why this happened. It might have been that these tools held some type of social clout. They might have played a part in identity or that they were a display of skill and prowess and were discarded once their purpose was met. This led one researcher to refer to these tools as 'the first commodity: A marketable good or service that has value and is used as an item for exchange'.

Homo ergaster and H heidelbergensis used Acheulean tools extensively, though they were used by H neanderthalensis and early H sapiens. It's thought that the tools also indicate that those who used them had some facility for language as their symmetry and the parts of the brain that allow for the fine, controlled movements to create such symmetry are closely tied to those parts of the brain that are used for speech. Support for artistic, and thus symbolic, expression comes from Venus figures, such as the Venus of Berekhat Ram and evidence of ochre use as found in Kapthurin, Kenya, and Duinefontein, South Africa.

[monatomicgold]

[izvletchenie]

Handaxe made of flint, Lower Paleolithic period, find spot: Saint-Acheul

“The very beginning of visual culture, which formed the basis for much later ‘art’, […] appears to have deep roots, and began with an interest in symmetry that went beyond mere functional considerations as is testified by the detached concern for the shape of Acheulean handaxes.” (Derek Hodgson)

[archaicwonder]

Large Prehistoric Acheulian Handaxe with Fossil Seashells, Made By One of Man’s Early Ancestors, Homo Erectus

Found in Pont-Arcy, northern France and dating to the Lower Paleolithic, 500,000-200,000 years ago. 17.8cm long

This pear shaped hand axe has been skillfully knapped from a large block of caramel colored flint. What is quite remarkable about this example is the area of the stone which has been left untouched. The maker of this tool clearly had an eye for aesthetic, having left the beautiful fossilized seashells embedded within the cortex.

Acheulian handaxes are thought to demonstrate an important step in the evolution of the hominid brain. To craft a tool of this complexity requires planning and purpose in the mind of the maker. A significant leap from the preceding tools, which were simple pebbles with a few random flakes chipped off.

[inspofromancientworld]

Stone Tools: Lomekwi

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/oldest-known-stone-tools-unearthed-kenya-180955341/

Found on the west bank of Turkana Lake in Kenya, Lomekwi is a site where artifacts dating back 3,300,000 years ago in 2011. This pushed back the earliest known tool making about 700,000 years than previously known. At that time, this site would have been near a river and now a ravine that was discovered when 'the survey team took a wrong turn and ended up at a site now called Lomekwi 3' where they saw 'what was normally hidden by the sediment', that being 'a series of strange stones sticking out of the sediment'. There they found 149 artifacts that based on the alignment of magnetic minerals and the volcanic ash around the rocks are the oldest stone tools yet found.

Source: https://geology.rutgers.edu/images/Publications_PDFS/Harmand_et_al_2015_short.pdf

These stone tools are relatively large, with the largest weighing 15 kg and might have been used as an anvil with others that had deliberate chips knocked off them. The researchers then sought to understand how the tools would have been created and were able to recreate them in two ways: by setting the stone on a flat rock and using a hammer rock to chip away at it, or by holding the stone with both hands and hitting it against the flat base rock. Either way, the researchers said '[i]t's very rudimentary', not requiring the dexterity of later cultures but also showing clear intent and deliberate action to make them.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/crafty-bonobo-shows-humans-arent-the-only-stone-tool-makers-32525182/?no-ist

Researchers aren't certain which hominin developed these techniques is uncertain, though it is known from observations that 'chimpanzees use rocks as hammers or anvils on their own or in the wild, and, with a little guidance, bonobos are capable of creating stone tools', pushing back against the idea that only the genus Homo is capable of tool use and making. Researchers aren't certain which hominin that was alive at the time made the tools, though Australopithecus afarensis was in the area at the time these tools were made and A africanus seems to have had a strong enough grip for tool usage, though Kenyanthropus platyops were also around this area and would have been alive at that time. The creation of these tools also indicate a 'reorganization and/or expansion of several regions of the cerebral cortex (for example, somatosensory, visual, premotor and motor cortex), cerebellum, and of the spinal tract could have occurred before 3.3 Ma [million years ago]', as well as an 'understanding of stone fracture mechanics and and grammars of action is clearly less developed than that reflected in early Oldowan assemblages and neither were they predominantly using free-hand techniques. The LOM3 [Lomekwi 3 site] assemblages could represent a technological stage between a hypothetical pounding-oriented stone tool use by an earlier hominin and the flaking-oriented knapping behaviour of later, Oldowan toolmakers'.

[inspofromancientworld]

Ivory Tools

Medzhybizh Меджибіж, Khmelnytskyi Oblas, Western Ukraine, is a a rural settlement at the juncture of the Southern Buh and Buzhok rivers. It is the location of a paleolithic site that dates back to between 450,000 and 400,000 years ago. Within this site, stone tools, such as axes and what were likely knives, and bones with cut marks on them, as well as burned remains in a hearth. These are likely the oldest hearth remains in Eastern Europe and the likely inhabitants were Homo heidelbergensis.

Ivory Tools

Source: Google Maps

Medzhybizh Меджибіж, Khmelnytskyi Oblas, Western Ukraine, is a a rural settlement at the juncture of the Southern Buh and Buzhok rivers. It is the location of a paleolithic site discovered in 2011 that dates back to between 450,000 and 400,000 years ago. Within this site, stone tools, such as axes and what were likely knives, and bones with cut marks on them, as well as burned remains in a hearth. These are likely the oldest hearth remains in Eastern Europe and the likely inhabitants were Homo heidelbergensis.

Source: https://www.anthropology.net/p/when-mammoth-ivory-met-human-hands

More recently, researchers found ivory remains that led researchers to reassess their ideas about what H heidelbergensis was capable of. The ivory, which is a relatively soft material, was worked in much the same way that stone was worked, a technique known as bipolar-on-anvil knapping, where an anvil stone and a hammer stone work flakes off a core material to create flakes. In stone, these flakes have sharp edges that can be used as knives or axes. With the softness and other properties of the ivory, it's unlikely that it would have been used as a knife, so it's possible that the ivory was used to practice or to develop new techniques, though ivory doesn't behave the same as stone. It might have been that children practiced on the softer material to learn by imitation, as well. These behaviors indicate a much higher degree of cognitive development than researchers assumed, with this being possibly the oldest evidence of social learning. This site also marks the oldest evidence of ivory modification, with the next oldest being from about 120,000 years ago by either H sapiens or H neanderthalensis.

[plotinuslovemachine]

“Time Capsule” Cave Discovered in Israel

Archaeologists uncovered an undisturbed prehistoric cave in Israel that preserves rare evidence of hunter-gatherer life in the Paleolithic p

Archaeologists have uncovered a prehistoric cave in Fureidis, Israel (south of Haifa), dating between 400,000 and 250,000 years ago. The archaeologists describe the cave as a “time capsule” because it remained largely undisturbed for hundreds of thousands of years.

The cave has generated much excitement because it dates to a period that archaeologists know relatively little about. The cave was used during the end of the Lower Paleolithic—or Old Stone Age—long before agriculture, cities, kingdoms, or writing. People lived by hunting animals, gathering edible plants, and using stone tools to butcher game, work wood, and process hides.

Discoveries from this period are relatively rare, especially from sites that have remained undisturbed as long as this one has. The artifacts remain where prehistoric people originally left them, allowing researchers to reconstruct daily life with unusual precision.

[inspofromancientworld]

Stone Tools: Oldowan

Source: https://becominghuman.org/pathways-to-discovery/the-fossil-record/archaeology-tools-and-artifacts/oldowan-hominins/

Oldowan, or Mode I, tools are named for the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, where they were first found in the 1930s and dated from 2,600,000-1,760,000 years ago, and have now been found through most of Africa. These were thought to be the oldest stone tools until 2015, when the announcement about Lomekwi was made. Deposits of Oldowan tools have been found in conjunction with Paranthropus, Australopithecus, and early Homo remains. The oldest tools appear in eastern Africa before spreading to southern Africa and then was taken into Europe and Asia as H erectus spread around 1,800,000 years ago.

In general, there are four types of stone assemblages: 'Flaked Pieces', which are cores and large choppers; 'Detached Pieces', such as flakes or fragments from the Flaked Pieces; 'Pounded Pieces', such as stones used as hammerstones to shape Flaked and Detached Pieces; and 'Unmodified Pieces', which were transported to various sites. Many of the tools are fairly close to the shape that they ultimately were used in, a style known as 'pebble tools'.

Source: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/early-humans-moved-stones-long-distances-to-make-tools-600000-years-earlier-than-thought-180987247/

To create the tools, river cobbles are collected, 'a roughly spherical hammerstone is struck on the edge, or striking platform, of a suitable core rock to produce a conchoidal fracture [a fracture that doesn't follow any natural planes of separation] with sharp edges useful for various purposes', leaving behind flakes, some of which might be useful. This type of knapping causes 'a characteristic bulb with fine fissures on the fracture surface. The flake evidences ripple marks'. As the period progresses, flakes could have been reworked to be more usable. Based on experimental replication, those who made the stones were mainly right-handed, showing that lateralization had already evolved in hominins.

The tools can be classified into three general classes, with Debitage, or waste, being those that show signs of modification but not of use. Heavy duty tools generally cores that have a sharpened edge that could have been worked on one or both sides of the edge as well as the hammerstones. Light duty tools are generally the flakes that were used as scrapers, awls for boring, and burins for engraving, though there is some overlap, such as heavy duty scrapers. Utilized pieces are those that started as one thing and then were modified and used for something else.

Based on how animal bones are scattered at many of the sites around tool assemblages indicate that hominins most likely lived in groups that had contact with each other, with individuals able to move between groups. Being more detailed than that isn't possible because of the length of time covered by the Oldowan and the high likelihood that the sites were used by various groups during that time. It's also thought that they scavenged the meat they ate based on the relatively high abundance of limb bones found around hominin sites.